Pete Carroll clashed with Boston reporters over everything. They called him a California surfer dude; he said he didn’t even own a surfboard. They said he was a “lapdog” and “Mr. Rogers with headphones;” he said they just didn’t get it.

So after a playoff win during Carroll’s first season with the Patriots in 1997, he (presumably) wore his finest khakis and Dad Shoes and took aim at his critics.

The topic that fired him up that day was … sports talk radio. Carroll believed talk radio had cost him his job with the Jets three years earlier. He believed it allowed for a “line of conversation that’s like the Enquirer;” that it was “totally irresponsible” and “such a weak part of our culture.”

But this being Pete Carroll, he did not stop there. He believed that somebody — a reporter, a radio host, anybody — would step forward and say, “Enough.” They would say, “I don’t give an expletive what you people think” and change...